Facebook habits shifting to mobile

SOCIAL MEDIA

By Benny Evangelista :
February 8, 2013

Tiffany Woolf of San Francisco used to be a Facebook addict, logging on at least five times a day. Now she checks Facebook only once every two weeks and is trying to cut back to once a month.

Her story is one anecdotal example of Facebook fatigue, a trend identified by a Pew Research Center study released last week that said 27 percent of the social network's members in the U.S. plan to spend less time on it this year, and that 61 percent have at one point taken a "vacation" from Facebook.

"It just feels better," Woolf said. "I'm in the moment more. I'm not in this virtual and physical world at the same time so much. My boyfriend has gone off of it completely and he feels cleaner."

Yet there's also data that suggests Facebook - along with Twitter and Google+ - is gaining momentum as users switch from PCs to mobile phones and tablets.

London online research firm Trendstream said global Facebook use is up 33 percent in the past six months, a period that coincides with the Menlo Park company's release of new, faster versions of its mobile apps.

"Anecdotally, I know of people who did stop using Facebook, but as soon as they got a new mobile app that was easy to use, they picked it up again," said Trendstream's Tom Smith, whose company publishes a report on Internet trends called the GlobalWebIndex.

There was a "significant Facebook fatigue" between 2009 and 2011, he said, "but what's really interesting is we're seeing a complete reversal of this trend."

25% increase

Facebook, which turned 9 years old last week, has said in response to the Pew study that it still had 1.06 billion monthly active users by the end of 2012, a 25 percent increase from the previous year. And the number of members who logged on daily averaged 618 million in December, a 28 percent increase from the previous year.

The biggest shift was in mobile - 680 million monthly active members, up 57 percent from 2011. In the fourth quarter, the number of daily users exceeded those who went to Facebook's website for the first time.

"Our announcement came on the heels of independent analyst reports which concluded that Facebook is the most downloaded mobile app in the U.S., and that time spent on Facebook accounts for over 20 percent of all time spent on mobile apps in the U.S.," Facebook said.

Ever since Facebook rose to social-networking dominance, critics have speculated about when it would start deflating and drop into the dustbin of online history alongside predecessors Friendster and MySpace.

The company added fuel to the speculation with an admission this month in an annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing listed one new potential business risk that "some of our users, particularly our younger users, are aware of and actively engaging with other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook."

"For example, we believe that some of our users have reduced their engagement with Facebook in favor of increased engagement with other products and services such as Instagram," the note said. Facebook, of course, owns Instagram.

Some burn out

Pew's study, based on a December phone survey of 1,006 U.S. adults, found that 42 percent of Facebook users age 18 to 20, and 34 percent of members age 30 to 49, were spending less time per day on Facebook last year compared with 2011.

One example is Woolf, 41, who burned out after about five years of heavy Facebook use, especially after her son was born.

"For a while, there's this high, a real addiction," she said. "You post something and then check how many likes you get, how many comments you get. It's an affirmation for yourself that yes, your kid looks cute, or yes, your boyfriend looks really good in Hawaii."

But about five months ago, while she was busy trying to post a photo of her son playing in a sandbox, she realized she was missing that fleeting real-life moment.

She asked herself, "Why am I doing this, why can't I take a picture and enjoy it for myself, why do I have to share it with my Facebook friends?"

Now she's trying to reduce her dependency on technology and is participating in the March 1 National Day of Unplugging, an annual event promoted by the nonprofit project Reboot to encourage people to take a break from technology for 24 hours.

But the Pew study also said the majority of Facebook users remain just as plugged in - 59 percent said it is just as important to them this year as it was last year, and 12 percent said it is more important. And of current members, 13 percent said they have increased the time they spend on Facebook during the past year.

Those statistics are in line with Trendstream's index, which has surveyed tens of thousands of social-media users around the world since 2009.

The index said Facebook use increased 33.4 percent in the last half of 2012 and was used by 51 percent of the respondents. Trendstream estimates that 693.5 million of Facebook's 1 billion members are active, up from nearly 520 million after the first half of 2012.

Twitter gains

Twitter showed the biggest percentage gain, with a 40.1 percent increase, to 288 million active members, while Google+ showed a healthy 27.7 percent gain to 343.7 million, largely users outside of the U.S.

Smith believes all three have benefited from the use of mobile apps, with Facebook catching up in the second half of 2012 when it ditched a slower, clunkier Web-based iPhone app in favor of a native mobile app. An Android version came out late in the year.

So while Facebook users may not be spending as many hours as before with a Web browser open to the social network, they appear to be using their mobile devices for more, although shorter, Facebook sessions during the day, Smith said.

"Some of the time spent in the past may have been higher than in reality because they would just open the service and leave it open, but not necessarily engaging," he said.

Generation Z

Ekaterina Walter, author of the book "Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook's Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg," published in December, said she doesn't believe Facebook fatigue will be as much of a challenge as keeping the service relevant to Generation Z, younger users who were born in the last decade.

Zuckerberg, 28, started Facebook by appealing to his fellow Gen Y college students.

"The question is will he be smart enough to realize what Gen Z wants?" Walter said. With choices like Tumblr or Twitter out there, she said, "is Facebook going to be the choice of platform for them? You need to remain top of mind no matter who you are, because you might become irrelevant very fast."

Trendstream's Smith, however, said the shift to mobile may make Facebook, Twitter and Google+ even more entrenched. He noted that the numbers for smaller niche and regional social networks have declined in the last six months, which could make it tougher for the next Facebook to get going.

"It will be harder and harder for new entrants to build out that kind of broad and general experience," he said.